Does God Love Crowbars?

Volume XXVIII, Number 5
April 16, 2024

Faithful readers, I hope you missed me as much as I missed you—and that you had the best Holy Week and Easter ever!

You Gotta Listen to... Keith Nester

Keith Nester stopped by to record an amazing podcast with my son Xavier and Anthony Mencini last week. You gotta listen to the part in the beginning about how the live-streaming daily Rosary Crew all started!

Keith, the Rosary, and Conversion

Not Dead. On "Vacation"

I love working for Our Lady, so I almost never take time off, but I've been taking a rare "vacation." After decades of renting and finally getting my four sons through college, I purchased a modest home—a fixer-upper that's been neglected for decades.

The only way I could afford it was to do a lion's share of the renovations myself, which at this stage includes demolition, heavy use of power tools, cutting or culling trees and shrubs, hauling thousands of pounds of debris and refuse—and, the worst of the worst:

...several days of getting nicked by rusty nails and avoiding live electric wires while jamming myself into cramped rafters and crawlspaces to carefully yank out super-nasty, filthy, rodent-dung-infested seventy-year-old insulation that disintegrates in my hands.

...in usually either freezing or sweltering conditions (at times sweating while freezing) all the while fully covering my face, eyes, arms, knees, and ears with protective gear, hats, eyewear, and masks.

Whipped Cream?

I'm not complaining. I was grateful for the excellent reparation during Holy Week. I offered it for your deepest intentions constantly. My sons and a couple of their friends—all veteran Cyrenes—have helped me out here and there.

I took a break today to come into the office to write this message because I wanted to comment on The Eclipse (which passed directly over the Cleveland area where I live), to discuss crowbars, and to decree the proper way for men to eat whipped cream.

I also have a gnarly photo of my bruised, cut-up forearms you're gonna love, a quote, and our worldwide cyber group prayer.

Twelve Hours of Hard Labor

My typical "vacation" day goes like this: drag my sorry and sore 61-year-old carcass out of bed at 6:00 am, pray the Daily Prayers to Save America, and then—following Father Ripperger's advice—real meditative prayer. I am not good at it. Distraction. Yet the meditative state "flows" into the rest of my day.

Saint Francis de Sales has been my nearly-perfect guide, based on his unparalleled masterwork on prayer in the second part of his Introduction to the Devout Life (which we are going to publish and make available to you as a tool for evangelization in a few short months).

After prayer, I steadily apply myself to manual labor for ten to twelve hours a day, usually until sunset, Monday through Saturday. After I stop working, I have a big meal, watch some television or read, then go to bed very early, sniper-shot-dead-tired, sincerely eager to get up early to spend time with Our Lord.

Prayer and work. I think Saint Benedict had something to teach about that. Ora et Labora. The days fly by.

I've lost ten pounds on my "rehab a house" diet. Because I've been praying so much and so deeply, and because most of the time I'm working alone, I've been contemplating how Saint Joseph and Jesus endured much more difficult manual labor for most of their lives.

The Body of Christ

In the original language of the Holy Scriptures, the Greek word used to describe their profession was closer to "builder" (tektōn). Today, carpenters build houses typically framed by wood. Back then (and to this day in that part of the world) homes were built from stone.

History and archeology confirm that Nazareth was near Sepphoris, a boom town back then because Herod had chosen it as his capital from 4 BC to 18 AD. Joseph and Jesus may have worked on a 4,000-seat amphitheater there.

In all likelihood, Joseph and Jesus cut, hauled, and worked with stone as home builders, using primitive tools compared to our modern power tools. Hammers, chisels, bars, ropes, and levers. Muscle power from animals and their own bodies. They surely made the furniture as well.

Depictions of Jesus' well-proportioned and sinewy-muscled body, confirmed by the photographic "negative" on his burial shroud, are accurate depictions of a man who awoke from early boyhood to perform extremely challenging manual labor with his father (and their crew, I'm guessing, of close friends and relatives).

They were strong, strong men. Tough. Clever. Wisened in that practical working man's way of solving problems.

Me, on the Other Hand

Cuts and bruises aside, my body is holding up pretty well. Walking across the country for Operation True Cross built up my lower half—otherwise I probably would have been injured while "on vacation" by now. This project has been like doing ten hours a day of natural weight lifting for my torso on up.

Hey, let's take a time out...

Back to Tools

My favorite tool has got to be the crowbar, also known as a pry bar. I have three versions, including a massively heavy one the length of a baseball bat (which also makes an excellent weapon).

This is the second house I've renovated (the last one was in the 1990s) and I had a home built in New Hampshire back in the olden days. I have more experience than talent or inclination. I do not really enjoy renovating like many men. To me, it is an endless series of hundreds of mostly simple tasks that I'm not very good at. (A female friend of mine picks out the colors.)

I am a decent painter, though—it helped get me through college. I can even paint with either hand because I'm ambidextrous.

I'm a lousy carpenter, but I can tear things out.

The interesting thing about demolition is that it is careful, almost intellectual work as the next "steps" of dozens reveal themselves as the layers come off. It's easy to get injured and is often loud because of the banging. It requires a lot of hauling, pulling, and contorting one's body in awkward positions. Step stools and ladders. There are plumbing pipes, electrical wires, and studs, debris, joists, and protruding nails to avoid.

Power tools, especially a variety of saws, are indispensable.

The Lever for the Clever

Of all the tools, I adore the crowbar most. When a crowbar is used (almost) delicately and intelligently, it makes the most impossible and difficult tasks requiring the most strength extremely easy. It is blunt. It is sharp. It is the lever for the clever.

With patience, and the application of steady pressure in precise locations, whatever it is that confounds and seems permanently attached gives way.

Ambidextrous, I sometimes use two crowbars at the same time, one in each hand.

I love the concept of leverage. Leverage makes a difficult or impossible thing easy. As I've spent hours using crowbars, a spiritual analogy about you, my beloved Mary Foundation benefactors, kept coming to my mind: we are Mary's leverage.

Blunt (me) and sharp (you). Excellent tools. Excellent weapons.

"Giving Way"

Animated by God's pure grace, we can do the impossible thing—namely, the complete overturning of our corrupt rulers and depraved society embedded over centuries—by being Our Lady's "crowbar" to implore and ensure the divine intervention required.

We don't need money, power, influence, or a fancy marketing campaign.

For the Father, everything is easy.

He decides. It happens. The impossible becomes easy. Through total consecration to Our Lady, my father and I have been called to be crowbars for decades. Now decades are reducing into mere years and perhaps months.

I can now soul-sense just how close the evil one and his iron grip on this world is to giving way—and you can probably sense it, too.

A Sign of Deliverance

This might not seem related, but many of you might not have heard how the eclipse passed over or near seven towns called Nineveh and coincided with major Catholic feast days. The best description of the impressive God-incidences that "lined up" can be found in a 21-minute viral homily from Sensus Fidelium on YouTube here:

The Catholic Eclipse

It is a must listen. Feel free to check it out and come back to me.

The priest mentions how the 2017 eclipse—exactly hundred years after Fatima—and the 2024 eclipse "crossed" each other. This year's eclipse roughly traced our third and insanely arduous California beam of Operation True Cross, at the end of which I proclaimed that God's divine intervention to save America had been secured:

Mary Crushes the Serpent!

Bear in mind that being "saved" might be preceded by historically unprecedented turmoil.

Personally, during last week's eclipse, I donned the Reliquary containing the fragment of the True Cross while I watched the moon cover the sun and prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet with an ethereal calmness.

The eclipse was a sign of hope, a sign of reassurance. I don't know about the rest of the world, but North America belongs to Our Lady of Guadalupe and America is the Immaculate Conception's territory.

The eclipse means this: Everything is going to be okay.

So keep praying and distributing the Daily Prayers. Keep living a simple, well-ordered life of prayer, work, and dedication to your family.

We are hidden. We are meek. Who inherits the earth? We are tough, you and I, carriers of the Holy Cross. Cyrenes and Veronicas.

We are God's crowbar, and the Immaculate Conception wields us in her hands.

Quotation

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness."
- Jesus to Saint Paul

Pray with Tens of Thousands

Join me in offering the powerful "Wednesday" prayer from the Auxilium Christanorum exorcism prayers for the laity found in the Daily Prayer Prayers to Save America, beginning in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and God, we ask thee to render all spirits impotent, paralyzed and ineffective in attempting to take revenge against any one of the members of the Auxilium Christianorum, participants in Operation True Cross, and residents of the United States, our families, friends, communities, those who pray for us and their family members, or anyone associated with us and for whom the priests of the Auxilium Christianorum pray.

We ask thee to bind all evil spirits, all powers in the air, the water, the ground, the fire, under ground, or wherever they exercise their powers, any satanic forces in nature and any and all emissaries of the satanic headquarters. We ask thee to bind by thy Precious Blood all of the attributes, aspects and characteristics, interactions, communications and deceitful games of the evil spirits. We ask thee to break any and all bonds, ties and attachments in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Gotta get back to work, so I can come back to my "real" job and catch up on all my emails... So I can wake up and pray.

I love you guys. You're the best.

Don't forget to order stuff. Order anything!

Leverage, baby.

With Saint Francis Xavier,

Bud Macfarlane
Founder

Bud's Amazing 2023 Messages

Daily Prayers Books $1 each

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